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+--- Thread: First Steps: Redux (/showthread.php?tid=7339)
First Steps: Redux - Mickey Mouse - 05-12-2018
For almost two years, Mickey Mouse had been in hiding. Stowed away in an idyllic corner of the Vasty Deep, not a thing dared to bother him. Contrary to the beliefs of the Omniverse at large, everyone’s favorite anthropomorphic rodent had not been gone forever. He’d been asleep, and now the multiverse’s most optimistic hero, with the biggest, most impressive ears, was back in business. He was awake.
* * *
A few months back...
A few months back...
Discovered. Oh, brother.
Mickey Mouse leapt from palm tree to palm tree, moving faster than he could remember moving in years. In this moment, he regretted not agreeing to do P90X with Nani. Their sabbatical from heroism of any kind had transformed into a sort of lazy holiday, and as danger forced him back into action, he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that he would be very, very sore tomorrow.
He sped down the mountain towards Lilo and Nani’s cottage which had abruptly gone up in smoke minutes before unwanted visitors had barged into their own hut. “Go — get the girls,” Minnie had ordered as a squad of Stormtroopers burst through the doors, blaster rifle trained on the lion that stood guard. Simba let out a ferocious roar, knocking the troopers back, and before his wife had finished summoning her scepter the king has leapt through the window and begun his descent.
The distance between their two homes wasn’t far, so even a little wearied Mickey burst forth from the beachy brush within minutes. He landed squarely in the sand in front of the combusting hovel, where two troopers stood, seemingly awaiting his arrival, and two more hurriedly carried a large metal container towards their ship, docked nearby.
Mickey’s ears perked up enough to hear a clanging sound and a low growl coming from inside the box that he recognized rather quickly as the sounds of Stitch, Lilo’s strange pet. He screeched and rattled, giving his captors enough trouble to frustrate them, but the cage’s defenses kept him soundly at bay. The stormtroopers loaded the alien up onto the barge just as the fires swelled at the small abode.
His eyes darted back and forth between the boat and the house. He scowled, and his hairline furrowed with frustration. Rescue Stitch from the clutches of the Empire, or save Lilo and Nani from a fiery doom. Both didn’t seem feasible.
One of the stormtroopers standing in front of the burning house whipped out a long, electrically charged staff and lowered himself into a fighting stance. The other raised his blaster rifle and trained it at the mouse’s head. Mickey took one last look at Stitch’s captors as they shuffled him onto the lower levels of the barge.
I’ll come and get you, buddy, he thought as his keyblade materialized in one of his gloved hands. He clamped his fingers down on the hilt and bent at the knees, sliding into his own combat posture. It struck him that he hadn’t fought—not really, anyway—since he’d broken free of Jafar and some New Babylonian remnants all those years ago, in Nippur. He took a deep breath. Time to shake the rust off.
The rifle-bearing trooper began firing off energy blasts, and one by one Mickey batted them away, keeping his eyes fixed on the other trooper beginning his own, foolhardy sprint toward the king.
“Hey, batter batter, hey batter batter, hey!” Mickey shouted with a grin, winding back and hitting yet another energy blast with his keyblade. The bolt deflected away from him and right into the weapon hand of the staff-bearing trooper, who yelped and released the staff into the air.
It spun through the air at an accelerated pace, flying over the beach and splashing into the ocean. “Home run!” Mickey yelled, delightedly. “That was aweso—ugh!”
Just as his fancy baton had crashed into the ocean blue, the staff-wielding trooper flung himself—singed hand and all—into the mouse, knocking him back onto the sand and attempting to pin him there. Mickey struggled against the stormtrooper’s grip as his comrade jogged up behind him and aimed his rifle. Dangit, the mouse scowled. How’d he let himself get in this position?
How’d he let these losers find him? For a very long time, he and Minnie and Simba had lived in peaceful solitude, only the young Hawaiian girls and Stitch to keep them company. Months into their tenure on this uncharted island in the Vasty Deeps, Proto Man—Mickey’s best friend since inexplicably entering the Omniverse—had washed up on the beach, and they’d lived for a while as one big happy family.
Slowly, that illusion had been shattered, bit by bit. Being in hiding wasn’t the type of state someone could be in forever, and Mickey certainly had grown antsy in their time away from the world. Not only did the ever present threat of the Heartless in his home universe tug at the back of his mind, but he had witnessed so many unspeakable atrocities since arriving here. Could he really sit by and watch as Karl Jak and his Syntech goons coerced primes, year after year, into their sadistic death match? Could he sit by while the Empire’s grip on the Omniverse tightened, their outposts in the Deep and the Endless Dunes growing stronger each day? He and Proto Man had banished Gilgamesh, but Nippur still sat as a seat of corruption. And he harbored a sinking feeling that sending the King of Heroes to the Underverse wasn’t the last they’d heard of him.
Proto Man’s disappearance only magnified these thoughts. He’d left not long ago, under the auspices of attending a nearby carnival, and never returned. A bad feeling crept up Mickey’s spine after that — that somewhere nearby, something went wrong, and Blues had been forced to fight it without him. He couldn’t bear that idea, and many times had attempted to leave their small, secluded corner of this archipelago to find out why his buddy had yet to come home. His wife wasn’t having it.
“Blues can handle himself,” she’d say. “If he wanted your help, he’d call you on the communicator. Whatever it is, he must not need you to beat it.” And if he hadn’t felt useless before, that pretty much put the nail in the proverbial coffin. He wasn’t needed. Maybe Blues didn’t even want him fighting evildoers by his side anymore. Maybe he’d thought a year plus of retirement weakened the mouse, and at the moment, Mickey was inclined to agree. Pinned on the ground by an effectively one-handed stormtrooper, and staring a blaster rifle—and an embarrassing trip to the Nexus—in the face. Had he really been out of the game so long that he couldn’t defeat two of the Empire’s weakest goons? Was he really about to die at the hands of some nameless secondaries?
Thankfully, the answer to the second question was ‘no.’
A deafening roar called the rifle trooper’s attention away. Simba leapt through the air, tackling the trooper to the ground, and Mickey took that moment of distraction to shove his yellow shoe as hard as he could muster into the other trooper’s nads. Through the mask, the trooper let out a garbled, mechanized moan, and rolled off the mouse, clutching his… uh, well, his private area. Mickey leapt up in time to catch Simba lifting a paw and extending his claws for a killing blow.
“Lieutenant!” he called out to his subordinate, “We don’t kill.”
“But your majesty—”
“We don’t kill. Keep them busy, I’m getting the girls!”
And with that, Mickey Mouse sprinted into the flaming hut, dodging burning rubble this way and that as he weaved toward the muffled cries of Nani and Lilo. Luckily, their small hut wasn’t too big, so it didn’t take long for the mouse to stumble on them, huddled low to the ground and trying their best not to breathe in any of the foul, smoky air.
Lilo cowered in Nani’s arms, her long pink dress scorched a bit at the ends and her eyes dripping with tears, probably over Stitch’s disappearance. She had always been the stronger sister, but no little girl should have to endure all this terror in the span of fifteen minutes. Nani, for her part, looked paler than normal, but had steeled her face, using her own body to shield her sister from the flames. They lapped at the older girl’s bare legs, and as Mickey ducked beneath one last burning beam to enter the room they hid in, he heard some not-nice words spill out of Nani’s mouth. Normally, he might’ve scolded her for the language—but under the circumstances, he let it slide.
“Oh, hey, buddies,” he smiled as he found them, “Let’s getcha out of here, okey-dokey?”
“Your Majesty!” Nani exclaimed, breathing a sigh of relief that she immediately regretted and coughed back up. “We—excuse me—we were worried they’d gotten to you guys.”
“Some measly troopers are no match for me and Minnie,” Mickey smiled, though he didn’t really know if he believed himself when he said it.
“Where’s Stitch?” Lilo piped in, breaking slightly free of her sister’s grasp and scramble-crawling to the mouse king’s feet. “Is he okay?”
Mickey’s expression bunched up. Outside, he heard the whirrs of the motor boat as it kicked into action. “He’ll be fine,” Mickey loosely promised, marking it on his mental to-do-list to prioritize Stitch’s rescue and safe return to the innocent Hawaiian girl. “Let’s get you guys out of here for right now.” He turned and aimed his keyblade at the roof, drawing a heart in the air and then launching a huge, golden beam of light upwards.
The energy beam smashed through the roof, sending planks of broken, burnt wood and clumps of the thatched roof flying in many different directions. Smoke billowed through the hole, and Mickey stuck two of his gloved fingers in his mouth and whistled for assistance. “Come on, grab my hands,” he ordered the girls, dissolving his keyblade and offering up two gloved palms. Nani and Lilo complied, and Mickey leapt towards the hole in the roof. Mickey would never have counted jumping amongst his skills, but they passed the hole’s threshold nonetheless, and just as they began to plummet back down, a dusty old magic carpet whizzed underneath them and came to a sudden stop. Mickey, Lilo, and Nani landed with a thud on the rug, and before they had time to catch their breath, it zipped away.
The carpet carried its three passengers away from the burning hovel and over toward the beach. Reaching that destination, though, had never been part of Mickey’s plan. They soared over the pair of stormtroopers scuffling with Simba, and the mouse king summoned his keyblade once again. He flipped off the magic carpet and sailed down toward the action, landing on the shoulders of one of the troopers. “—what the?!” the trooper shouted, glancing up and down as it tried to swat the mouse off his shoulders. Mickey quickly shut him up, placing the keyblade against the man’s neck and pulling it tight, trapping the trooper in a chokehold.
Simba turned, the enemy underneath him now sufficiently frightened into unconsciousness, and watched as his king grappled the stormtrooper’s neck with his weapon. The trooper fought back, and soon, Mickey lost his balance, his stubby legs sliding off the guy’s shoulders. He swung around wildly, holding on merely by the keyblade as the soldier tried to wrestle himself free. Simba blinked for a second at the king’s struggles, and then let out another ear-piercing roar. The trooper’s grip on the keyblade suffocating him loosened and, as much as he could with his throat under pressure, he let out a shout, stumbling away from the lion and tripping backwards.
With Mickey Mouse still attached to him, he fell onto his back, the little mouse’s body cushioning the fall. His armored form crashed into the small-figured rodent and within seconds, Mickey’s sight went black. If he’d still been awake, the mouse king might’ve sighed at how pathetic he felt. As it was, he’d been soundly smacked into unconsciousness.
Oh, brother, indeed.
RE: First Steps: Redux - Mickey Mouse - 05-13-2018
Mickey awoke on the ocean.
He could tell, despite being indoors, because of the distinct feeling of seasickness that washed over him almost immediately. The mouse’s earliest job had been as a deck hand on the Steamboat Willie, and honestly, that experience ruined boats for him for life. First, Pete had been a terrible boss, considering he was literally pure evil, and any sort of ship reminded him of all those bad memories. Second, while most of the rivers they rode in the Willie were tame, if they ever hit rough waters—or dared to go into the ocean—Mickey’s stomach betrayed him almost immediately, just as it did now. As it churned, he rolled off the cot that someone must’ve moved him to and began frantically searching for a window.
The cabin lacked those, surprisingly enough; what level of the ship was he even on that didn’t have a window? He bounded through the slightly ajar door of his quarters and, luckily, it didn’t take long to find a staircase to the upper deck. The mouse sprinted up it as fast as his wavering body would take him, burst into the sunlight, and heaved himself over the edge, sending whatever Minnie had last cooked into the watery depths. The chunks tumbled out of his mouth and made a loud, squishy splash in the ocean. Mickey looked quickly away, raising his gaze to the horizon.
Ocean blanketed everything in front of him. No matter how much he squinted, the little archipelago he’d called home for years now was nowhere to be found. Had he really been out of commission that long? And where, exactly, had he ended up?
He spun around to take his first real look at his saviors. The huge wooden boat stretched out before him, filled to the brim with mysterious-looking creatures of all shapes and sizes. Some resembled mice, like him, but with tails shaped like lightning bolts; others looked like angry lizards with flames spouting from the end of their tail. Others, still, sort of resembled humans; others, different kinds of animals; some looked like nothing at all, balls of gas with eyes and a mouth just floating through the air.
What the heckskies were these things?
As he scanned the ship’s crew, a more familiar figure fought through the crowds until, at last, Minnie Mouse erupted into view, wearing a scowl and one of her classic judgmental expressions. “Honestly,” she shook her head, “You sure do know how to cause a mess, don’t ya, dear? Geez, oh, geez.” She turned up her nose and yanked Mickey away from the edge of the boat by his collar. “Now quit making a fool out of yourself in front of our new friends before I have to try and convince them I don’t actually know you.”
She giggled, amused with her own joke. Mickey, stomach still wishy-washy, did not quite see the humor. “But, honey—I’m seasick,” he protested. Minnie’s brow raised sarcastically, and she swatted him in the back of the head, the kind of light slap that would’ve said ‘shut up’ if that awful phrase had been in either of the mice’s vocabularies. A quick glance at the other denizens of the boat showed they had, indeed, attuned their attention to the two anthropomorphic mice now having a small spat on the starboard deck. Presumably they had all been going about their days, doing their work, until their prized guest had tumbled forth from the lower decks to present his dinner to the fish below.
“Do they have to stare?” Mickey asked, sort of a hypothetical because he knew no matter what he did, they were gonna. Minnie, for her part, rolled her eyes and scoffed, planting another light slap on the back of her husband’s head. “Owie-ow-ow!” the male mouse exclaimed, pressing a gloved palm to his skull. “Y’know that’s not helping my seasickness either?!”
“Go downstairs and summon yourself some medicine or something,” Minnie whispered in his ear in a tone that said something about that exchange wasn’t meant for all the ears that were turned in their direction. Mickey met his wife’s eyes and she gave him that look that said she was really trying to project her thoughts at him… but of all the talents he had, telepathy was not one of them. He scrunched up his face, trying to express his desperate confusion. “They don’t know we’re primes, dummy,” she muttered. Luckily, she was much better at understanding nonverbal communication than Mickey; he’d never been very keen on it.
They didn’t know the mice were primes. Okay, that made sense. Keeping their identities as secret as possible had sorta been their thing for the past year and a half, or so. “But who are they, Minnie?” Mickey asked, “who the heck-skies are these guys? And why did they rescue us?”
“They’re Pokémon,” Minnie replied, as if that should be obvious. Mickey’s face scrunched up in confusion. Was he supposed to know what the heck that word meant? Because he absolutely had never heard it before in his whole life. Minnie scowled. “You’ve been in the Omniverse for years, in the Vasty Deep for years, and you don’t know what Pokémon are? Did you hit your head on the Fountain of Infinity when you got here? Because you’re thicker than I remember.”
Trying his best to ignore the fact that she had just verbalized how long they’d been stuck in this heckhole of a universe, Mickey pressed on. “I’ve never heard of ‘em before!” he protested. “I mean… Poké-what?! What’s that even mean?”
Minnie let out a long, frustrated sigh, glaring at her husband. As she noisily expelled her anger, Mickey became acutely aware that their apparent rescuers grew more and more interested in their conversation as it became more heated, and he reached for his wife’s shoulders in an attempt to pull her into some sort of calming embrace. She, however, would have none of it, and with a growl spun around and tried to leave her husband behind on the deck of the ship.
“Wait, honey—” he called after her, grabbing her hand and yanking her back to him.
“I don’t know, Mickey, that’s just what they call themselves,” she shouted. Mickey placed a finger to his lips to try and quiet his wife down, but she simply grimaced. If she’d have eyebrows, they would be shaking with frustration by now. “They seem nice, and they have a whole island to themselves, and they aren’t Empire goons, so I told them to take us to their home. I figured it would be the safest bet.”
Mickey’s eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped. “What the heck, Minnie Mouse?!” he said, this time louder himself and using his wife’s full name, “We’ve been in hiding… for over a year… mostly at your urging—” Minnie tried to speak up, but Mickey shushed her, “—and now you’re just going to let some strangers take us to their island?! How does that make any sense?!”
“THEY SEEM NICE,” Minnie screamed, throwing up her hands and immediately storming away from her husband.
Mickey watched his wife walk away, frustration bubbling up inside his little mouse body. For years, she hadn’t let him leave that archipelago for even as much as a grocery trip. Despite all of that caution, the Empire found them anyway, and now that they were back to being legitimate fugitives, she was throwing caution to the wind and entrusting their safety to a bunch of, frankly, weirdo-looking creatures from some other island in the middle of a verse that was crawling with Imperials and Imperial sympathizers? Did she not see the holes in this plan?!
At that moment, Mickey became acutely aware that the Poké-things (or whatever they were called) were watching him rather intensely. They’d reached a level of staring, by this point, which made him quite uncomfortable, only amplified by the fact that he now found himself very much alone on the top deck. Well, not alone, he supposed; there were literally dozens of these little Poker guys scurrying around up here, eavesdropping on their conversation and now boring their eyes into Mickey Mouse’s soul. It unnerved him.
“Okay, hey, there’s nothin’ to see here, okay, fellas?” He avoided eye contact with all of them and hurried down to the lower decks, trying to find Minnie’s cabin. With any luck, she hadn’t decided to lock him out and give him the silent treatment.
RE: First Steps: Redux - Mickey Mouse - 05-15-2018
Knock, knock, knock.
“No,” Minnie called from the other side of the creaky wooden door. “I’m locking you out and giving you the silent treatment.”
Mickey scowled. Now was not the time for her to get peeved at him. If they were going to remain safe, they needed to remain on the same side, and for that, Mickey Mouse needed some answers and he needed them now. He stepped back from the door and held up his hand. A rainbow substance appeared out of thin air and began to coalesce into the shape of his favorite weapon; seconds later, his fingers closed around the keyblade’s handle, and with a righteous battle cry, he ran at the door to his wife’s cabin and took a big downward swing.
Made out of the oldest, most pathetic wood Mickey had maybe ever seen, the door flew off its hinges and across Minnie’s cabin, crashing into the far wall. His wife looked up from her desk at the commotion, and instead of getting truly angry—as Mickey had sort of suspected she would—she simply let out a deep, annoyed sigh.
“We’re gonna have to pay to fix that,” she droned, reminding her husband once again that their mysterious benefactors weren’t aware of their prime status. No summoning new doors with omnilium, he supposed. “Now are you gonna come in here and whine at me some more, honey, or are you gonna let mama do her work?”
“Work?” Mickey asked, sliding up next to her at the desk. Splayed out across the escritoire were so many documents that Mickey couldn’t have possibly kept track. Maps of the Deep—and of the other verses they’d visited, including the Endless Dunes and the Tangled Green—blanketed the surface of it like tablecloths, and lots of different papers about lots of different people and things were stacked in seemingly random places. At the moment, Minnie had donned her spectacles and examined a piece of paper that looked to be a wanted poster for a blue turtle with a sour-looking disposition. What was she up to?
“Min, honey, aren’t you going to tell me—”
“While someone slept the last twenty-four hours away, dear,” she sneered, “I’ve been working to try and find some allies for us here in the Deep. We hid for a long time but that doesn’t seem to be possible, anymore. I’ve got some feelers out to some smaller factions around our little archipelago, and I’ve got to follow up with them on the Dataverse before they start to get impatient and we lose the link—”
“You’ve been communicating with people?” Mickey asked, slightly dumbstruck, “Without telling me?” Minnie spun around in her chair and looked her husband in the face. She placed a hand on his shoulder, which Mickey supposed was meant to be comforting. It didn’t really accomplish that goal.
“Honey,” she started, as if to tell him the worst news in the world, “I’ve been communicating with people the entire time we were on that little island.” She looked at him expectantly, waiting for a response, but he couldn’t muster up one. She’d been… reaching out to people? Without letting him in on it? Had she been keeping a bunch of secrets from him, or just this one? Why hadn’t she let him reach out to some of his allies? He certainly had just as many as she did, if not more! “I know, I know,” she continued, “I made you stay put and not contact any of your little friends, but I promise, Mickey, it was for the best. Now, if we’re all done here—”
“Little friends?!” Mickey shouted. Minnie shot him a glare, and he lowered his voice, still well aware that this boat’s walls might be very thin and the Poké-creatures could probably still hear them if they got too loud. “Minnie,” he whispered intensely, “I don’t think you get it. If you’d just have let me call Erza… or Samus… or Belle… or, or, I don’t know, Harry Dresden, even Pepsiman or something, I probably could’ve managed to get us passage through Costa del Sol and through Coruscant or the Nexus and back to Ambrosia, back to the Clubhouse, back to our home—”
“I don’t get it?” she repeated, flabbergasted. “Mickey, let’s be real. We both now, back home in the Disney Realms, I was the one in charge of diplomacy for a reason. Sure, you’re super friendly and—I do have to admit—super charming, but you aren’t good at politics. You’re a buddy, and you’re a fighter. You’re really good at fighting, so good at that, and I’m so good at figuring out stuff like this. I mean, for gosh’s sakes, Mickey, you just suggested Pepsiman as a legitimate option to help us smuggle ourselves through Empire territory. I know that every option isn’t necessarily a good option, and I know the proper channels to contact a good option when I find one. If I’d have let you reach out to one of those ‘MESH’ guys—or whatever it was you called yourselves—you probably would’ve accidentally alerted the Empire to our location…”
“They got our location anyway,” Mickey reminded her.
“Because of your buddy Blues,” Minnie snapped back.
This took Mickey off-guard. What did she mean? Had Blues… betrayed them? Mickey had never known the preteen machine to be in any particular trouble with the Empire, but he didn’t seem to be very friendly with them, either. And after all their time together, he found it hard to believe that his pal would’ve done anything to put the mouse and his wife in harm’s way. “No way,” he shook his head, “Blues would’ve never sold us out, Minnie, and you know that. We’re pals.”
“No, no, he didn’t,” Minnie clarified, waving her hand in the king’s face. She still hadn’t even really looked at him for very long since he stepped into her makeshift office, remaining intensely focused on the maps and documents she was going through. Mickey tried to catch glimpses of them, but he’d never been much for gleaning information like that—he’d never really been a studious mouse. “But the Empire tracked his path retroactively from the big fight going on in the other part of the verse, and that’s how they found us—”
Mickey’s ears perked up. “Big fight?” he asked, and Minnie bit her lip. “What big fight?”
Now, she turned to face him. “So—I don’t exactly know,” she looked at him, cautiously, “It’s some big, dark threat threatening to destroy everything. It’s happening in basically, like, all the verses or something.” Mickey’s eyes grew wide and his brow furrowed with frustration.
What?! What did she mean? Some big, dark threat threatening to destroy everything? She’d known about this and she hadn’t told him? That sounded like the kind of thing Mickey Mouse, the most heroic hero the Omniverse had ever known, probably, needed to goshdarn know about! That sounded like the thing Mickey Mouse needed to do something about. Why had she kept this a secret from him? Did she think… maybe… did she also think that he wouldn’t be capable of defeating it? Had she lost all her faith in him, too?
Had she been keeping this a secret from him for a long time?
“Oh, geez, I’ve been keeping that a secret from you for a long time.”
“Why?!” Mickey pleaded, forcing his wife to look him in the eyes. He needed to know what had possessed her to keep him in the dark when so many people—primes and secondaries alike, including, it appeared, his best friend, Blues—were in clear and present danger. “Why would you do that, Min? I could be helping people!”
“Whatever, there’s, like, millions of primes fighting it,” she shrugged, averting her gaze from him and returning to her documents, “I’m sure it’ll be over soon.” For a moment, the mice sat in Minnie’s makeshift office in silence. With her husband’s protests mysteriously ceasing, the mouse queen looked back at Mickey and saw the sadness drooping his expression. She sighed, but not out of annoyance; out of some sort of pity. She sat down the papers and placed a hand on his shoulder, gently pressing her forehead to his. “I’m trying to keep us safe, Mick,” she explained, “I just… I’d just convinced myself that if you’d gone, it would have ruined everything we had on that island, all that peace. And I know, I know it got ruined anyway, but…”
She trailed off, tearing up a bit. “Minnie,” Mickey said, reaching out.
She jerked away. “Someone had to try and protect us,” she stated, defiantly, “You would’ve just run off and alerted the Empire to where we were and, I don’t know, maybe gotten yourself killed or banished and then where the hell would we be?”
“Honey, language!”
“No—stop that!” she wagged a finger in his face. “I was trying to protect us. You’d rather go off and play hero than think about the big picture.”
Of course I would like to help people, Mickey thought. But he trusted himself to think of Minnie’s safety too, to keep her welfare in the front of his mind. How much had she been keeping a secret from him? He knew she’d go away for hours at a time to other parts of the island, under the auspices of needing her ‘alone time,’ which had always been a thing with her. They’d always been incredibly close, ever since he’d first stumbled upon his lady love with the other musketeers, but she’d always needed her space at moments. She’d never been codependent.
To be honest, that had been much more Mickey’s thing. Being alone had never really been a state he’d enjoyed. He’d much rather surround himself with buddies, find a way to keep himself occupied with the company of others.
Had he relied so much on other people that, in the relative solitude of the past few months, he’d become an incompetent warrior?
It couldn’t be the Omniverse. There had been moments when he’d felt more powerful in this place than he ever had in his home universe. He thought back to his time spent in Dante’s Abyss, which, while an absolutely terrible experience all around, proved him a capable fighter to primes across the verses. Nevertheless, in the past year or so since leaving Nippur and barely making his way to the relative safety of their old home in the Vasty Deeps, he’d lost some of his magic.
“Someone’s got to protect us, yeah,” Mickey acknowledge, “but Min… someone’s gotta protect everyone else, too. They don’t have many good guys here, honey.”
“But why you?” she shot back. “Why do I always have to give you up so you can save someone else?”
“I don’t know why me,” Mickey shook his head. “Heck, I don’t even know if it should be me. I don’t know if I’ve got what it takes. But I wanna do it, and that’s at least a big part of it, don’t ya think?” Minnie seemed unconvinced, so he sucked up just a bit more. “And you’re never giving me up,” he promised, “You know that no matter how many people I leave home to go rescue, I’ll always need someone to rescue me. And that someone’s you, Minnie. It’s always you.”
She placed a gloved hand on his cheek affectionately. Even in the midst of their biggest arguments—and this one, he knew, would remain a big one—she knew how to show him the love. He sighed, and placed his head on her shoulder. She roped him in for a hug, and squeezed tightly.
Gosh, he loved her so much.
“Please, please, please, Mickey,” Minnie sighed, separating herself and placing her hands on her husband’s cheeks, “Let’s go to the island and talk to the Pokémon there. I’ve been in contact with them for a while just in case things went sour with our former living arrangements, and… well, I really think they seem nice.” Mickey pouted, looking his wife in the face. She really seemed to be set on this island of pokers or whatever they were called.
“Okey-dokey,” he acquiesced.
“Good,” she smiled. “I love you!”
“I love you, too,” he grinned. “So what’s this island we’re going to called again?”
She pointed to a non-descript archipelago on the map below.
“Cinnabar,” she said, “Cinnabar Island.”
RE: First Steps: Redux - Mickey Mouse - 05-20-2018
“Cinnabon Island? Like the dessert? Yum!”
She would remind him, rather forcefully, over the rest of the trip that it was Cinnabar Island, not Cinnabon, like the dessert. It didn’t really stick.
Nevertheless, Mickey didn’t understand what made her so nervous when he suggested he lead the embassy onto the island. At first, Minnie flatly refused that plan. They’d discussed this, after all—Mickey might be tad charming, but he still really have the head for complex affairs of state. He mostly had the head for how to summon a keyblade and swing it around in some goons’ faces.
He also, as he would remind her, had a knack for being a leader. Sure, that mostly manifested in battle—which seemed kind of counter to the mouse’s general pacifistic philosophy—but like it or not, Minnie couldn’t deny that people listened to her husband. After all, that was why they had a few protectors in the first place. Sure, most of them were secondaries, their souls inexplicably tied to objects the pair had uncovered in their journeys. Right after Dante’s Abyss, Mickey had been called into Thrall’s chambers back in Camelot and given a little orange gem called the Earthshine; the orc shaman hadn’t really been able to explain it, but when watching the mouse’s affairs in the tournament, something had spoken to him, told him the soul trapped inside this crystal was related to Mickey.
As it turned out, inside had been the lion Simba, Mickey’s most trusted lieutenant, normally guardian of the Pride Lands, now a secondary that Mickey supposed he’d accidentally summoned. Simba hadn’t really been able to explain how he’d gotten to the Omniverse—simply that, around the time Mickey had started the crazy death tournament, he’d appeared without explanation in Camelot, been sent to the wizards of Dalaran for examination, and then stored inside the gem for his own safekeeping.
Similarly, the leader of the elves in the Tangled Green had presented him with another gem—the green Naturespark, with the spirit of one of Mickey’s gentler subjects, Bambi, inside. And with Aladdin had come Aladdin’s magic lamp, now sitting next to the gems on a shelf in Mickey’s cabin and holding the spirit of a magic Genie that had sworn to help the mouse in his quest through the Omniverse.
Whatever the heck that quest ended up being.
Part of it, he supposed, would be to continue searching for more of his subjects. He’d met several throughout his journeys through this strange universe, not just including the spirits who now counted themselves a part of his direct court, and he was sure that more had to be out there… somewhere.
“Can you zip me into this dress?” Minnie asked, stepping into his cabin. The mouse king complied, smiling at the presence of his wife who—after much reluctance—had finally acquiesced to the idea of him approaching the leader of Cinnabon Island. He’d convinced her that the fame he’d garnered from his appearance on Dante’s Abyss would get them a head start with whoever they were meant to meet.
“If your constant mispronouncing of their island’s name doesn’t get us thrown in prison first,” she snarked, “and I really don’t think that anyone remembers that tournament, Mickey, it’s been years. There’s been a bunch more of them with a bunch of way more interesting events since then.”
Mickey scoffed. She of little faith.
“I’m swell, unassuming, and famous,” Mickey assured her. “It’s gonna be fine. The people of Cinnamon Island are going to just love me.” He emphasized the island’s name to prove he knew it. Minnie’s expression didn’t seem impressed with his attempt.
“You aren’t famous to anyone except the Empire’s bounty hunters, like that weird robot guy you told me about from the Graveyardverse,” Minnie rolled her eyes, “and you are definitely swell and unassuming, which is just another reason I feel like I should be the one leading this party.” Mickey harrumphed, and his wife glared at him. If looks could kill, she would’ve bored holes through his huge ears within seconds.
Mickey found it hard to believe that no one remembered his time spent in that heckhole of a tournament. After everything he’d been through, people knew who Mickey Mouse, third place on that insane death parade Dante’s Abyss, was. He’d been a part of the only squad of guys totally and completely committed to nonviolence! He’d been there when they’d made the climactic decision to heal Pepsiman instead of just eliminate an easy-pickings contender! He’d taken the Orgosynth from that green guy’s corpse and flirted with darkness for more seconds than he cared to admit!
He was famous. She would see.
Not long after, their small coalition—himself, his wife, Simba, the Genie, and a few of the sailors who called Cinnabon Island home—waltzed off their ship and onto the docks of the island, greeted by a diplomatic envoy of Poképeople. Their leader, as it seemed, stepped forward from their coalition. Standing no higher than Mickey himself and looking decidedly like a mustached cat, he spoke with a degree of sleaziness that set Mickey’s alerts off already.
“The name’s Meowth,” the cat introduced himself, in an accent Mickey could only describe as hailing from a place called New York, though he’d never seen or heard of such a place. “Our ruler would like to—well, to be honest, our ruler wouldn’t really like to do anything. But his council extends their welcome.”
Mickey’s face furrowed a bit.
“Who’s your ruler? Why doesn’t he extend his welcome?”
“Mickey,” Minnie chastised, kicking him in the shin a bit.
“Ow,” he glanced back at her with just a bit of disdain coloring his expression. She darted her eyes at the contingency of bodyguards flanking the Meowth. The cat himself might not have looked so impressive, but the creatures surrounding him? Downright scary. A huge version of the flame-tailed dragon—this time with wings—stood off to his right hand side, and a muscly human-looking dude, except with several arms and weird grayish skin, stood off to the other side. A few more stood behind them, but those two by far terrified Mickey the most. “Okay, okay,” he looked back at Meowth, taking a nervous gulp, “Myself, my wife, and our advisors accept your welcome. Is there a way we can speak with the council?”
For a moment, Meowth just looked at the collection of creatures around him, crept on to their faces until, cued by Meowth, they all erupted into a fit of giggles and laughter. Meowth, for his part, rolled around on the floor, struck by a hilarity that escaped Mickey and Minnie. A quick look behind them showed that the members of Cinnabon’s navy that had accompanied them also stifled their own chuckles. What was so funny? The orange fire-dragon’s tail flickered with each chortle.
“Can you—a stranger—speak with the council?” Meowth guffawed, “I mean—we’ve never—or, had never, I guess, let strangers on this island in the first place, buckaroo. We’ve been out of contact with the outside world so long that I don’t even remember what someone who isn’t a Pokémon looks like, man!”
Meowth continued to laugh. Mickey began to grow frustrated. As the pacifist king’s patience grew a bit tired, a rainbow essence began to swirl around his fingers. He wouldn’t hurt these dudes, but he wasn’t afraid to scare ‘em a little. He would’ve summoned his Keyblade right then and there if Minnie hadn’t smacked him even harder in the ribs, knocking off his focus and then giving him a glare. His eyes widened as he remembered what she’d whispered to him when they’d first woken up on the boat: these people didn’t know they were primes!
“That being said,” Meowth continued, steam-rolling over the mouse’s moment of self-reflection, “it seems the council has elected, in recent days, to speak to notable visitors. That is, ahem, non-Pokémon ones. So as it turns out…”
Meowth paused for a moment, and then began slapping the ground in what appeared to be his very own makeshift drum roll. Mickey turned around and gave his wife a look that said, ‘who the heck is this guy?’
At long last, the drum roll ended, and Meowth looked up and hissed: “…as it turns out, I can take you to the council.”
“You can?”
“I can,” Meowth smirked, “…but will I? Y’know, mouse, you’re on the lower end of the food chain here. Maybe instead of taking you to meet the bosses, I’ll take you home a grill you and your lady friend here up for my afternoon snack.” Mickey’s fists clenched and all he could think about was how he wanted to summon his keyblade and teach that little cat man a lesson. Minnie stepped in front of him.
“We’re not tasty, Mr. Meowth,” Minnie smiled sweetly, “And we’re taller than you.”
The Meowth scowled. “Right this way.”
And with that, he turned and slithered between the feet of the larger Pokemon he’d brought with him. After a moment, the contingency separated in the middle, and Meowth beckoned Mickey, Minnie, Simba, and the Genie to follow him further into the island of Cinnabon. “That guy’s kind of a drag, eh?” the big blue giant whispered to his mice lords as they took a deep breath and started into the settlement.
With reluctance, Mickey and company trudged forward. The remainder of the island seemed relatively normal; lots of houses and huts and other different types of buildings, hastily and shoddily built, all filled to the brim with these strange little monsters. Where had these little guys come from, and how had Mickey not encountered them before? Or had he? Outside in the world, they seemed to be few and far between, if they existed at all. Here, there seemed to be endless numbers of them, filing in and out of this place and that, going about their day without a care in the world.
Without a care, at least, until the mouse couple and their strange pair of companions blustered by. What Meowth had said seemed to prove true: outsiders were not common here on Cinnabon, and everyone who lived here regarded them with a default level of apprehension not unlike Mickey’s own reservations about them. Perhaps, he thought, they were both just afraid of each other; perhaps that fear was unfounded, and stood in the way of a fruitful alliance. He couldn’t know that, though, and so in the meantime, he resolved to use caution when interacting with the Pokéthings. He would find out what was up with them in good time—and hopefully find out why they were named that way, since the only things about any of them that seemed ‘pokey’ at all were Meowth’s whiskers.
As they traversed deeper into Cinnabon, the population became slightly more… diverse. “So it really isn’t just Pokémon here,” Simba noted quietly to his leaders, and what the lion said rang true: many different types of creatures seemed to roam here, though to be fair, the Pokemonsters were each so unique that had it not been for the presence of some outcast humans, Mickey might’ve just assumed they all fit under the one umbrella.
It seemed, though, that creatures from far and wide now called this island their home. They all shared a commonality in this dissimilarity from each other; the only thing truly connection them was a shared feeling that they just didn’t fit anywhere. Anywhere but here, Mickey supposed. He’d encountered plenty of outcasts before. But these guys seemed… sadder. Downtrodden in a way that most denizens of the Omniverse had not appeared to the mouse. And as he passed more and more of them, the king began to feel… sorry for them, somehow. He’d always been a sucker for someone in need of a pick-me-up, to be honest.
Eventually, they neared the center of the island, and came upon a giant amphitheater constructed into the side of a hill. Meowth led them into the only visible opening in the structure’s outer wall and in a few moments, they stood—Meowth, Mickey, Minnie, Simba, Genie, and a small coalition of guard Pokers—in the middle of a large, open stage. Scattered about the ‘seats’ above them were more of these monsters, all looking similarly old and wise.
“Who do we have today, Meowth?” a voice boomed from the middle of the stands. Mickey squinted to try and see the guy but he couldn’t quite make him out.
Weird-lookin’ dude, Mickey thought.
“Weird-lookin’ dude, eh?” the creature repeated.
Mickey’s eyes grew wide. Did that thing just read his mind?
Quote:BEGIN QUEST: "A Little Peace and Quiet"
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RE: First Steps: Redux - Mickey Mouse - 05-21-2018
The Alakazam lifted himself off his seat with nothing other than his mind, and hovered down to the stage. With one hand, he twirled his strange-looking mustache. With the other, he fiddled with a spoon, bending it back and forth seemingly without even touching it. The mouse couple narrowed their eyes at the curious Pokéthing. Did he have… psychic powers of some sort? That’d be just crazy.
His feet landed softly on the floor and he stepped toward Mickey Mouse, placing the spoon over one eye and leaning down to get a closer look at the diminutive intruder. The creature’s gaze bored into the king, sending a surge of discomfort rocketing up his spine. He’d never really been one to get scared of someone just like their demeanor, but this guy—and the group of intense-looking monsters scattered about the stands of the amphitheater behind him—struck some sort of fearful feeling in him. They were more… eerie than terrifying, perhaps, but Mickey still found himself wanting to get the heck out of dodge.
“Watch what you think, mouse man,” the psychic-type Poképerson scowled, standing upright again and removing the spoon from his face. Mickey grimaced, his brow furrowing and his back straightening as he tried his best to look intimidating. At probably a third of the Alakazam’s height, his attempts weren’t altogether successful; for his part, the council-creature chuckled under his breath.
“Uh—excuse me, Mr. Mouse,” Meowth turned back to his charges, sounding decidedly less assured than he had when he’d greeted the mice at the docks, “This… is… Bartram, an Alakazam, a psychic-type Pokémon and the head of the council in the absence of our leader.” The mustached cat tried his best to hide his quaking body and rattling knees, but Mickey and Minnie clocked it. What type of leader, exactly, was this… Bartram, if he inspired such fear in his subjects?
Mickey needed to know who the actual ruler of Cinnabon was, since by all accounts, that didn’t seem to be this dude. He’d been willing to go along with this charade for a while, but if he was gonna be treated with the type of suspicion that bordered on rudeness, he wanted it to be coming from someone who was actually in charge. “Where’s your real leader at?” Mickey looked to Meowth defiantly.
“Our leader does not entertain guests,” Bartram interjected, flicking a finger and psychically returning Mickey’s gaze upward at him. Mickey felt his chin jerk at the pull, but he couldn’t move his face once the Alakazam had stopped its magic. He was holding him in that position, he supposed. “At least… not ones that have nothing to offer Cinnabar Island. What, may I ask, is your purpose here, mouse?”
Mickey scoffed. “Purpose? You haven’t even asked our names, bud! Let me go!” he protested, but Bartram simply grinned with a sadistic glee as the mouse struggled in vain to get out of his psychic grip. Mickey growled, frustration seething just underneath his gentle surface. He didn’t like being treated so meanly before he’d even gotten the chance to properly introduce himself.
“What my husband means to say,” Minnie spoke up, brushing past Mickey and dropping to a knee in front of Bartram, “is that we come seeking shelter from the Empire, sir. They attacked our home, almost killed our friends, and captured another. The two that got away are currently taking refuge on the ship you sent to my distress call, and—”
“Distress call?” the Alakazam wondered, aloud. Mickey, too, found his attention caught by this—he supposed he’d never really considered how the ship full of Pokéy men had found them, but he hadn’t really expected it had been because of any direct efforts by his wife. Bartram, too, seemed puzzled by the idea of Cinnabon responding to any such distress call, and turned and looked at the rest of the council. “Fugitives. Typical. And one of you brought them here again without the express permission of the rest of the council. Who was it?”
The various Pokémon scattered about the amphitheater’s stands remained silent.
“No matter, we’ll get to the bottom of it,” Bartram shrugged. He turned back to Minnie. “Well, Ms. Mouse, I must say your husband did have a point. I don’t know who any of you are. Before we go any further, would you mind introducing yourselves?”
“Uh, yes, of course,” Minnie stammered, “I’m Minnie Mouse, Queen of the Disney Realms, and this is my husband, King Mickey. We’ve come to—”
“Yes, yes, I know why you’ve come,” Bartram sighed. “A King and a Queen, eh? Surprising that I’ve never heard of either of you.” The Alakazam spun around and began hovering back toward his seat. Mickey, released from the Pokemon’s magic grip, tumbled forward onto the ground.
“You’ve never heard of me?” Mickey asked, scrambling to his feet. “I’m the Mickey Mouse that fought in Dante’s Abyss.”
“I don’t watch much television,” Bartram shrugged, spinning around to face his guests and plopping back down in the seat where he’d began. He sucked in a deep, raspy breath, and then placed the spoon to his other eye, gazing at Mickey, Minnie, and their comrades for a few seconds before continuing. Off to his side, Mickey could hear Minnie mutter something like ‘I told you so’ under her breath. “It’s no matter,” the psychic continued, “Perhaps you can still be of use to us. You’ve come at an opportune moment—we’ve got a job that requires skills most mere secondaries don’t have at their disposal. It requires primes.”
Minnie stepped forward quickly. “We’re not—”
“You’re primes,” Bartram reached out, psychically clutching her with one hand and holding her in place. “I already knew that, but even if I didn’t, your husband gave it away. Only primes can fight in Dante’s Abyss.” Mickey could feel Minnie’s glare boring a hole into the back of his head. “Your lion companion? Is he a secondary? And the ones back on the ship?”
“…yes,” Mickey nodded.
“And the genie?”
“Yes, he is,” he told the Pokémon council. “Could ya release my wife? Please?”
Bartram let out a groan, and complied. Minnie fell to her knees.
“Ugh, this dress is gonna get so dirty,” she muttered under her breath, picking herself up and dusting herself off. Mickey reached back and grabbed her hand, helping her regain her balance and pulling her forward to stand next to him.
“So… what can we do for you fellas?”
Bartram sighed, again. He glanced over at the multi-armed guard that had accompanied Meowth to greet them, and gestured away. “We’re… missing something valuable,” he explained as the muscly creature stalked away, “And I’m in need of someone to retrieve it. It’s a gem, you see. A prized one, that greatly improved our master’s collection when we had it stored here with our other prizes. It’s called the Watergleam. This pirate—”
The Alakazam gestured over to another entrance of the amphitheater, where the Machamp pushed in a cage on wheels. Inside sat a ragged-looking man with dreadlocks and the baggiest clothes Mickey had ever seen. From what the mouse could tell, he’d been trapped in that cage for quite a while, and yet he still seemed decidedly damp. The pirate slumped in the corner of the small container, humming a shanty or some other seafaring tune under his breath. He held a compass in one hand, opening and closing it over and over, as he shook his dreadlocks back and forth. Altogether, he looked worse for wear, but somehow Mickey suspected that it wasn’t because he’d been through anything too terrible—maybe, he pondered, this guy just always looked rough.
“This pirate stole it,” Bartram continued, “but when we finally caught up to him, he’d gone and lost it to someone else. Someone… much more potent and dangerous, to say the least.”
Mickey stepped away from his crew, walking tentatively toward the messy-looking man in the cage. The closer he got, the more familiar the dude looked, until finally he could make out the man’s facial features and recognition washed over him.
“…Jack Sparrow?!”
“That’s Captain Jack Sparrow… your majesty,” the pirate smiled, taking a huge swig of his alcoholic beverage. Mickey’s eyes grew wide. How the heck did Captain Jack Sparrow get here? Probably the same way as Aladdin and Simba and all the rest, to be honest, but he still didn’t have a good explanation for how he or Minnie could’ve summoned so many of their subjects now lived lives as secondaries, amongst the other Omniversians. Jack Sparrow—the one who captained the Black Pearl? The most famous pirate vessel, sea ships and gummi ships included, in the whole universe?
“The one and the same, to hear his thoughts and memories tell it,” Bartram intervened, reading Mickey’s thought’s once again. The mouse scowled up at the Alakazam, once again not pleased about the intrusion. Nevertheless, Sparrow’s presence here on the Isle of Cinnabons intrigued him. And like it or not, they needed shelter from these weird Pokédudes, so he supposed figuring out what the heck was going on was the only option available here.
Minnie slid up behind him, peering into Sparrow’s face and also registering it as familiar. Together, they carefully approached the cage until they stood just a few feet away, close enough to confirm that this was, indeed, the famous pirate from Port Royal back in their kingdom. Jack’s eyes flitted over to Minnie, leering weirdly, as Mickey knew he was prone to do. “To what do I owe the pleasure, my queen?” He sat his bottle of rum on the ground and reached through the bars to grab Minnie’s hand, probably in some futile attempt to kiss it. The lady mouse jerked her hand out of the pirate’s grasp and wiped it on her dress.
“Gross,” Minnie muttered, stepping behind her husband. “Just because we know who you are doesn’t mean you’re getting any special treatment, Jack.” The pirate opened his mouth to correct her once again about leaving off his titles, but his mouse shut forcibly. Mickey and Minnie looked up to see the Alakazam holding his lips closed from afar. What a strange crew of people.
“So,” Mickey whispered to Minnie, “I’m thinking you be good cop and I’ll be bad cop.” He glanced over to his wife with a grin. Though she could be irritating at times, he truly adored adventuring with her.
“First: we’re not doing good cop, bad cop,” Minnie rolled her eyes, “We’re just going to ask him who has the gem thingy and then go get it. Secondly, you’d be a terrible bad cop.” And with that, she shook off her discomfort at Jack’s general presence and brushed past her husband. “So, Jack—”
“Captain Jack,” the pirate repeated, again, freshly released from Bartram’s psychic clutches, “and what type of treatment do the two of you little buggers have in mind, anyhow? Gonna draw and quarter a little secondary you yourselves probably inadvertently summoned?” Mickey and Minnie remained silent at this suggestion. “Gotta be one o’ you too, anyhow,” Sparrow continued, “ain’t nobody else—no other primes, anyways—in this whole Omniverse knew good ol’ Captain Jack Sparrow, as famous as I was in the old lands. Just you two. Hurts me feelings a bit to know you didn’t do it on purpose.”
“We wouldn’t dare bring anymore lowlifes and criminals to this place,” Mickey snarled, “it’s already infested enough with evildoers as it is.”
“Evildoers?” Sparrow stumbled back, “Offends me a little bit, milord. I’m one o’ the more sensible men you got in Port Royal. You been out there recently? Guess not, since you’ve been clowning around here, eh? Well, Mr. King Mouse, perhaps you should be going and inspecting your worlds a little bit more, huh? A bit out of touch, aren’t we, Mousey?”
Mickey huffed, but before he could snap back, Minnie stepped between them. “Sparrow—er, Captain Sparrow,” she said, holding a hand to her husband’s chest in an attempt to calm him, “we’re here to talk about a gem you stole from Cinnabar Island some time ago.”
“Oh, that ole thing?” Jack Sparrow snickered, “That was years back, miss. I don’t know what happened to that—all’s I know is I had it, and then those little monsters got me, and then I didn’t have it.”
“Little monsters?” Mickey asked, glancing up at the council. Did he mean the Pokéy thingys that inhabited Cinnabon Island? Because if so—well, that’d be a weird bait and switch, for Bartram to tell them they had to retrieve this gem only to find out Bartram had it the whole time. So… logically… there must be another group of these things roaming out there somewhere, right?
“Oh, yeah,” Sparrow continued, “Violent little buggers. And their leader took an interest in that gem, took it right out of my coat pocket, he did. Very scary little fellow, and quite vulgar, too. You probably wouldn’t like ‘im, Mr. Mouse. The war turtle, they call ‘im. Runs around with some of the craziest weapons I’ve ever seen, ‘e does.” As Jack’s description of the turtle passed through Mickey’s big ears, he suddenly found memories flashing through his brain.
He’d only really sort of come into contact with him in the Abyss, but…
“Wartortle,” Bartram called, “Nasty blood traitor. You’ve heard of him?”
Mickey perked up. “Oh, yeah,” he nodded, “I know that guy.”
Quote:QUEST: "A Little Peace and Quiet"
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RE: First Steps: Redux - Mickey Mouse - 05-30-2018
To tell the truth, that was kind of a lie.
Mickey Mouse didn’t ‘know’ Wartortle, in the traditional sense; moreso, they had simply both been contestants on the same insanely violent death match game show a few years back. If his memory served, the mouse king had never even met the vulgar turtle in combat during the tourney. He, by no means, would claim to be an expert on the Poképerson; quite the opposite, in fact. Most of Mickey’s knowledge of this new adversary came from rumors and whispers and torturing himself with rerun viewings of his own time in Dante’s Abyss.
Nevertheless, this limited experience seemed to satisfy Bartram and the crazy cast of characters that made up Cinnabon Island’s council. He didn’t know if desperation was a factor in their decision, but these shadowy figures—who still had mostly yet to reveal their true identities to him—seemed to trust what little knowledge the mouse had. That puzzled Mickey even more: these creatures, by far, knew more about the mysteriously terrifying leader of a band of rogue, rebel Pokér players than he would ever even pretend to know, and yet somehow, they’d decided that he would be the right fit for this job.
Maybe they were just trying to get rid of him. Or, maybe they hoped he would succeed, but had doubts. It crossed the mouse’s mind that maybe they just needed someone expendable and were setting him up; that, perhaps, the fact that he was a prime, and most of them weren’t, made him more suited to walking into this dumpster fire of a mission that, almost certainly, would end awfully. But they couldn’t be that mean, right?
“Mickey,” Minnie muttered as a cabal of big, huge Poképeople led them away from the amphitheater, “you absolutely can’t do this. They’re setting you up. They just need someone expendable.”
What the heck? Mickey thought, turning and looking as his wife put into words his exact thoughts, Is everyone telepathic these days?
Minnie, can you hear me?
“Why are you squinting at me like that instead of responding?” the lady mouse growled, a scowl sharpening the normally rotund features of her face. Mickey shuddered a bit. She’d been pretty angry at him in recent months, but he didn’t know how long it had been since she’d been this angry at him.
“Look, I’m sorry that I just volunteered to go—”
“—and insisted on going alone—”
“—and insisted on going alone, yes,” Mickey sputtered, “but you set all this up. You’re the one who wants us to get in good with the Cinnabon peeps, let me do my thing and get us in good, Minnie.” Besides, the mouse remembered all too well how Minnie had gone and continued to stay in contact with potential allies while he twiddled his thumbs on their picturesque island; as nervous as he’d been about potential threats looming just beyond the horizon, he would have been happy to spend the rest of his days living in peace with his wife. But even she knew that was too much to hope.
“So what are you gonna do? Just waltz up to the Pokemon Liberation Front’s front doors and say hey?” she snarled sarcastically, “You can’t catch everyone with your endless perky charisma, Mickey Mouse. Most people are immune to it, and I’m even building up a tolerance myself.” She crossed her arms, stopping in her tracks.
Mickey paused too, musing over the question. What, exactly, was his plan? Wartortle wasn’t the type of guy to be messed with lightly, and if he were being real, his trademark was an unusually light touch. From the outside, this mission didn’t really seem to be in his wheelhouse. But the Cinnabon guys had thought he’d be good at it, and he certainly was inclined to try to save a trapped soul from the hands of a madman—or mad-Pokéman, as it were. But was he just going to find out where the PLF made their current home and… show up?
Unless someone could give him a better idea, then… yeah.
“But, uh, your Majesty, Mick,” Genie piped up behind them, “how will you know where to find him? They say he just wanders aimlessly around the Deep, messing with anyone who accidentally crosses his path.”
“Then I guess I’ll just have to cross his path, huh?” Mickey grinned, suddenly swelling with confidence. Yes, he was out of practice—yes, he hadn’t fought for real in a dang long time. But if there was one thing he was good at, it was drawing attention to himself; and once Wartortle was in his sights, he knew he’d be able to charm the shell off that turtle in no time. How bad of a guy could he be, right?
“Your Majesty,” Simba interjected, sitting on his haunches and pausing their procession. “That sounds like it might take quite a while. Wartortle’s dangerous, but all the rumors describe him as quite lazy sometimes, too. It could take months—even years—to find him.” Mickey’s brow scrunched up and he turned around to look at his lieutenant; the lion might have a point, but he’d find some other way to attract the vulgar turtle to him. He’d already waited years for more adventure—he wasn’t about to wait much longer for some excitement.
“Come on, Simba, where’s your sense of optimism?” the mouse smirked.
“Oh, I believe in you, sir,” the lion nodded, “which is why I’d like to suggest a… quicker option of earning repute.”
Simba gestured with his nose toward one of the shanty shacks that lined the road they walked on; it looked altogether ramshackle and abandoned, but some freshly-printed posters hung on the walls: Dante’s Abyss 2018. Sign up today!
Minnie’s face went pale. “No,” she shook her head vigorously, “Absolutely not.” She grasped Mickey’s hand, trying to silently urge him to ignore the lieutenant’s suggestion, and to be honest, his first instinct was to flat out shut down the idea.
Dante’s Abyss, the last time through, had not been pretty. Mickey had, in the span of less than five days, made some incredible friends, and then watched them all suffer and brutally die until he was the last one left, before he, too, had been murdered by that space marine. For two years, the mouse had lived peacefully ignorant of the inner workings of Syntech and Karl Jak, not paying much attention to the two other Abyss iterations that had occurred in the interim. Deep inside, though, he’d always felt like that was a mistake. Certainly, he didn’t know if his body could take any more carnage—and self-care was important. But he’d struggled with whether or not it was more important than stopping the evil of Jak and his cronies.
He’d stood up to so many people during his time in the Omniverse, and defeated most of them. The Warlock holding Teucer under guard, Gilgamesh and his New Babylonians… the battles he had under his belt were impressive, but he hadn’t dared to take on Jak again, after the trauma of the first time.
Did he dare now? Was he brave enough?
If nothing else, entry into the competition might alert Wartortle to his presence—and then he could steal the Watergleam back for the people of Cinnabon Island. He glanced back at his wife, and solemnly dropped her hand, walking toward the poster and ripping it off the wall. Behind him, he heard the muffled sniffles of Minnie Mouse as she realized that her husband was about to make a decision that might alter their lives in the Omniverse for the foreseeable future.
Mickey turned back to his queen and his two advisors.
“Okey-dokey, everybody,” he giggled, “Let’s get ready.”
Quote:To be continued in the Dante Verse.
QUEST: "A Little Peace and Quiet"
Words (This Post): 1,298
Words (Quest Total): 5,658